This invention relates to a shoe, especially a sport or rehabilitation shoe with a shoe sole with at least one insert part formed of a honeycomb body consisting of elastic compressible material, and having honeycomb cells of which the central axes run at least approximately perpendicular to the plane of the sole.
From U.S. Pat. No. 4,485,568, an insole for a shoe is known, which exhibits a honeycomb structure. The upper side of this insole consists of an air-permeable material and the underside of a thin backing. On the peripheral edge the honeycomb cells, which are applied between the foamed padding (upper side) and the thin backing, are at least partially open, since the honeycomb body is produced from undulating or meander-shaped strips glued together on the walls and then stretched so that honeycomb cells of longitudinally extended rectangular form result. Such honeycomb bodies, as a result of the laterally open edge honeycomb cells, have a greatly decreasing damping toward the edge, so that the restoring force of such a honeycomb body in the edge areas also tends almost toward zero. This is not favorably influenced or compensated for even by the upper side and underside joined on the edge. For an insole this result is also not very disturbing, since the form of the insole generally corresponds approximately to the projection of the foot on the shoe bottom and the edge of the insole hardly serves for support of the foot.
Cushion soles are also known (see, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 532,429 and 1,559,532) in which honeycomb air cushion inserts are provided in heel and forefoot regions of an insole or outsole. In these cushion soles, the peripheral cells of the insert are closed at their side edges; however, the ends of the cells are open and the insert is disposed in or on another sole layer to produce an air cushion effect. Also, the cells or partial cells at the periphery of the cushion inserts are smaller than the other cells, which are all of the same size.
With known honeycomb structures, since all of the honeycomb cells are designed in the same way, except at the edge area, the damping and restoring force is essentially uniform, except at an edge or narrow peripheral area.